Perhaps the single most important tenet of Joseph Smith’s emerging Mormon ideology in the 1830s and 1840s was the identification of his church as “latter-day Israel.” This identification drove much of the rest of his scripture and doctrine, from his concept of “law” and a restored “priesthood” to his identification of America—and specifically Independence, Missouri—as the “promised land” to which Jesus would one day return.

This represented a replacement theology for the early Mormons, substituting their religion as a new Israel very much like the old. They appropriated ancient Israel’s sentiments and traditions, and especially its special status as God’s covenant people. The God revealed in the Old Testament made a covenant with Israel that should they keep his commandments they would be blessed and extolled above all others on the Earth. As stated in the Bible: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee [Abraham] and thy seed after thee…for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed” (Genesis 17:7).

The text then stated that God removed his persecuted people from Egypt and gave them material blessings of lands, cities, fields, and power. (Joshua 24:12). The Israelites, demonstrating their commitment to this God, obeyed strict ethical and ritualistic demands of priestly law. In the Old Testament, God leads and his chosen people follow, and both act. God was not passive, to be apprehended only by faith, but he moved in history and Israel knew him by what she saw him doing for her. Israel was not saved merely by faith, but by obedient action, by serving its God.

This approach is not unlike the replacement theology of Christians through the millennia since the first century church. A dominant view in Christianity insists that it is the New Israel, a continuation of the concept of Israel from the Old Testament. This view teaches that Christianity is the replacement for Israel and that the many promises made to Israel in the Bible are fulfilled in the Christian Church. So, the prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Land of Promise are “spiritualized” into promises of God’s blessing for Christians. The Latter-day Saints, however, carried the replacement further, also substituting themselves for the Christian church.

Within the concept of the “great apostasy” of the followers of God the ancient covenant was abrogated, first passing from the Israelites to the early Christians and finally to the nineteenth century Mormon followers of Joseph Smith. Latter-day Saints accepted God’s covenant with Abraham and his lineage, but emphasized its departure after the death of Jesus, and explicitly state that this covenant was reestablished at the time of Joseph Smith (D&C 110:12). Known as the “new and everlasting covenant” (D&C 22:1; Jeremiah 31:31-34; 32:36-40), it is included in the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ practiced by Mormons.

Further, this new chosen people, favored by God above all others, implies a community willing to accept God’s complete law, which is based in latter-day revelation through the church’s officially-sanctioned prophet. This requires an acknowledgment that God has spoken to both ancient and latter-day prophets and continues to do so. The early Mormons came to believe that the promises and blessings said to be bestowed on Israel at the end of days is no longer the inheritance of Israel but would now be bestowed on the followers of Joseph Smith.

The last address of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo.

This idea of a them as God’s chosen people had profound ramifications for the early Mormons. In particular, it contributed to the myth of innocence, which is ubiquitous in the Mormon documents of the 1830s and 1840s. It reveals that the retreat from American religious pluralism to theocratic separatist communities represented an escape from moral ambiguity, from the fear of making the wrong choices. As a religious city-state under tight control, Nauvoo became a stronghold and a haven where the followers of Joseph Smith had their most important choices—what they should do to serve God—made for them. They went on missions, worked on the temple, and served in various church offices at the prophet’s direction.

Also, their devotion to the Mormon millennium was defined by the church, and their identity as God’s chosen people was assured through this process. Their innocence was thus guaranteed, and their sense of potential for evil was minimized. As is common in such situations, the threat of evil was projected onto others—in this case the non-Mormons, who were regarded as ungodly enemies.

Another way of saying the same thing is that a chosen people always defines itself against an unchosen opposite, and through that mythic dichotomy differences in human culture (beliefs, values) are transmuted into differences in human nature (the good versus the evil). Hence, in early Mormonism the innocent children of God realized their identity through their struggle against the evil followers of Satan, who dominated American society everywhere else except among the Mormons. A conflict of cultures resulted and dominated the early history of Mormonism.

5 Responses to Replacement Theology and the Early Mormons as a Chosen People

…They *got* a savior. A little haberdasher who rose to power and ended WWII. I’d say Harry Shipp Truman deserves at least a sainthood for that one, only instead of crosses around our necks, hats will go back in style :P]

Where to start? From the very earliest history of the Latter Day Saint movement church leaders voiced a fear that they were being unjustly persecuted by a sinister group conspiring to destroy the gospel. Joseph Smith was convinced that as soon as his religious career began “false reports, misrepresentation and slander flew, as on the wings of the wind, in every direction. My house was frequently beset by mobs, and evil designing persons; several times I was shot at, and very narrowly escaped,…” Smith voiced repeatedly that “enemies of the gospel” were everywhere present and sought to bring the downfall of both himself and the church. He wrote to Emma Smith while awaiting trial in Missouri in November 1838: “we are prisoners in chains, and under strong guards, for Christ sake and for not other cause,…I think that the authorities, will discover our innocence, and set us free, but if this blessing cannot be obtained, I have this consolation that I am an innocent man,…” Smith couched these ideas about persecution of the innocent in the context of an overarching, well-organized, and sinister conspiracy. “Shall a man be considered bad when men speak evil of him?” he told a Nauvoo congregation in 1842. “No!” he added. “If a man stands and opposes the world of sin, he may expect all things array’d against him.”

To avoid the mistaken impression that Joseph Smith’s beliefs in this regard were not sustained throughout his entire career, there are 354 separate entries under persecution in Smith’s seven-volume History of the Church, many of them running several pages in length. All of these claim that the Mormons suffered unjust persecution maliciously brought upon them by a conspiracy of untold proportion and malevolence.

The Times and Seasons also published an editorial in August 1842 entitled, “Persecution,” which summarized Mormonism’s sense of a conspiracy of evil. “‘If ye will live godly in Christ Jesus, ye shall suffer persecution’,” it said. It was “a prophecy that has received its fulfillment in all ages, that had been known and understood by all saints, and that has been engraven upon the memories of all the faithful.” The Mormons suffered persecution, the article asserted without hesitation, maliciously brought upon them by a conspiracy of untold proportion and malevolence, some of the actors of whom were traitors to the Latter Day Saint cause.

This belief in persecuted innocence was expressed in other settings and by different people. Parley P. Pratt, one of the most eloquent of all Mormon writers, stated in an affidavit given before the Municipal Court of Nauvoo in the summer of 1843 that all of the problems of the church had been “caused by religious bigotry and persecution, and because the Mormons dared to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience and agreeably to His Divine Will, as revealed in the Scriptures of eternal truth; and had turned away from following the vain traditions of their fathers and would not worship according to the dogmas and commandments of those men who preach for hire and divine for money, and teach for doctrines the commandments of men, expecting that the Constitution of the United States would have protected them therein.”